Rae Klein: DOUBLECROSS
Eden was a trap. The garden of paradise was not so much paradise as equal parts sanctuary and minefield, and a sanctuary with a minefield does not make for eternal bliss. On the sixth day, along with man, woman, the animals, and the garden itself, the great maker double-crossed his only conscious creations with the very existence of the Tree of Knowledge. DOUBLECROSS, Rae Klein’s fourth solo exhibition with Nicodim and her second at the gallery’s flagship Los Angeles gallery, is a visual palindrome of existential riddles imbued with a quiet, primal tension—perhaps it is shame from after the fall. These are paintings from a freshly exploded consciousness, a dreamlike, eyes-half-opened state somewhere on the spider’s thread between Heaven and Hell.
Rae Klein (b. 1995) lives and works in Michigan. She graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 2017 with a BFA in Painting. Her visual vocabulary isolates references to mankind’s attempts to assert its mastery over the feral world through fear, power, spirituality, or some combination of the three. Exhibitions include Rae Klein, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2025, solo, forthcoming); Echoes of Eden: A Return to Bosch's Garden, curated by Gaïa Jacquet-Matisse and Peter Brant Jr., Private residence, New York (2024); Niklas Asker, Rae Klein, Jorge Peris, Nicodim, New York (2024); The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); POWERPLAY, Nicodim, New York (2023, solo); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Last Night I Dreamt I Was Running, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023, solo); DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, New York (2023); LOW VOICE OUT LOUD, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022, solo); The Comfort in Calamity, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco (2022, solo); BODYLAND, curated by Lauren Taschen, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022); End of Eden, Galerie Wolfsen, Aalborg (2022); Todo es de Color, The Curator’s Room, Amsterdam (2022); Paper., BEERS London (2022); Waiting in the Field, The Valley, Taos, New Mexico (2021, solo); I Have My Eye On You, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp (2021); and When Shit Hits The Fan Again, Guts Gallery, London (2021).